Perspective
by SJlikeslists
Summary: The story always seems a little different when someone else is doing the telling. This is a collection of stand alone pieces featuring how Katniss's world looks when you ask someone who is not Katniss.
1. From a Career District

AN - This collection of one shots contains separate pieces. They do not tie to each other or to any of my other writing unless specifically noted.

_From a Career District_

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to _The Hunger Games_.

We live in a realm that is filled with contradictions. How we look at the contradictions is, in and of itself, a contradiction. Allow me to be more explicit. There is the Capitol. There are the Districts. They are two distinct entities that comprise a larger whole, but we are always to remember that there is a distinction. They are the conquerors; we are the conquered. They issue orders; we obey them. They are to be served; we are to do the serving. One would think that such clearly delineated lines would leave us with an us and them sort of a view of the situation, but thinking like that is something that is most decidedly discouraged. There is never supposed to be an "us" when it comes to the Districts. Even though so many parts of our lives are divided into Capitol and District designations, the Capitol does everything in its power to ensure that we in the Districts never view the other Districts as being on the same side.

I imagine that it would be their preference that we never view the situation as having any sides at all. It would work best for them if we could be convinced to see nothing but the Capitol and what it wants as the only available option. There is a lot of lack of understanding of basic human nature displayed by a significant number of people in the Capitol, but falling into the trap of thinking that the previously mentioned preference is actually a viable option has yet to occur. They, instead, offer us the opportunity to view the situation through the view of having sides under the condition that we view it as our side versus that of the other Districts.

I have often wondered if that was not the main point of the introduction of the Games. There were any number of ways in which the Capitol could have exacted punishment, but most of those would have involved the Districts suffering together. That, in and of itself, is a uniting experience. If there is one thing upon which we can all agree, I think it is the fact that the last thing the Capitol wanted in the wake of the rebellion was any sort of a sense of unitedness on the part of the Districts. That was one lesson that seems to have stuck with them over the ensuing decades (when so many others seem to have drifted away from them) - united Districts cause them trouble.

The Games manage to pit the Districts against each other even in the midst of something being inflicted on the Districts as a collective. There are deaths and gore and plenty of opportunities for inter District resentment to build up within the confines of the Capitol's Treaty terms. We will not even touch on the additional factor of the food rations that go along with winning (another way to view the children on the screen as less individuals by making them more the physical representation of whether fewer children in your District will go hungry the next year). People have long memories when it comes to their children (it is a pity that the signers of the Treaty did not seem to have much in the way of forethought when it came to theirs). The Games reduce the individual Districts to caricatured representatives on a screen. It becomes less about the children as individuals and more about them as a symbol.

You can tell that in the streets after the Games have ended for another year. It is never Rhee Waller or Cody Binns who killed so and so. It is always the girl from Five or the boy from Three. It sinks into people's memories that way, and we have decades of memories. The names fade (if we ever bothered to learn them to begin with); the places do not. Seven killed the boy you thought was going to win. Ten got lucky and avoided that trap that ended up with your District's partners losing each other. We see them as their District, and we all keep a bizarre tally in the back of our minds of which District was responsible for what.

We have decades of collective recollections of why this District cannot be trusted or why that District plays dirty and on and on and on in an endless loop of a lack of unitedness that probably causes the puppet string moving tiers of power in the Capitol to fall asleep at night with smiles on their faces.

They do not even end it there - there are always Capitol pushed divisions even within the Districts to make certain that each District itself has only so much unitedness to go around - the kind that gets all used up thinking derogatory things about the other Districts and not plotting against the larger problem. There are divisions woven within divisions. The Reaping itself is yet another attempt at creating divisions. It is designed to push thoughts of my family's safety over yours and your children's sacrifice instead of mine. All of these designed divisions lead to another truth about life in this place.

The one thing that you can count on in Panem is the fact that you will always hear about exactly what the Capitol wants you to hear about. There is a carefully orchestrated secrecy about other Districts and what goes on in them, but if there is anything potentially divisive to be pointed out, then you better believe that that information will somehow make it through the layers of filters that everything in this place is subjected to before it is allowed to be dispersed. They always know exactly what they are doing. They always know exactly what type of a response they are trying to provoke. In a lot of ways, it is a game that they never stop playing. (I do not think that they can stop playing. I think their carefully constructed version of the world collapses around them if they do.)

Therefore, it makes no difference that we theoretically should know very little about what any of the other Districts think of us. We do not travel. We do not receive visitors. We do not send letters or make phone calls that go beyond our own boundaries. We do not communicate with other Districts. We see only fleeting glimpses of them on our screens. That level of a lack of interaction should lead to us knowing nothing (and presuming to know nothing) about those who dwell within the boundaries of Districts labeled with another number. It does not work that way. We still know exactly what the outlier Districts call us behind our backs. They call us Careers. That should not mean much. We call ourselves Careers, but that information is still permitted to us for the explicit purpose of causing wounds to the nonexistent relationship we have with the people that we will likely never encounter.

Career is an acceptable term here. It is a word like any other that we would use to name a teacher or a shop owner. It is what the children who go into training are known as because that is what they are. Training for the Games, knowing how to win the Games, and having their lives potentially end with the Games is their chosen path in life. It is their career. We say the word with the weight it deserves - no less, no more. It tells you what someone does. The other Districts would have you believe that it tells you what someone is.

When outside Districts use the word, they do not say it at all. At least, it is not any configuration of vocalization that I would define under the connotations of say. It is more like spitting - as if the word has some sort of a bad taste to it that they are trying to expel from their mouths by exhaling it as quickly as possible. Ask me how everyone in my District knows that fact even though the vast majority of us have never been beyond our District boundaries. You do not need to ask? Good for you. You catch on quickly. We all know because they want us to know. We always know what they want us to know, and we know it with the level of certainty with which they want us to know it. There are times when whispered rumors serve their purposes better - this is not one of those times. They want this to be clearly understood with no doubt.

Most people do not even know why they know. It does not occur to most to wonder why we would be aware of such a thing when everything else besides basic this is where such and such comes from information about other Districts is kept strictly confidential. They play their information dealing hand well on the subject. The passing on of the information is not overt. It is not pushy or shoved in our faces. It simply is there in the background seeping in to our conversation and our daily lives until we all accept it as a fact that is without any questioning of why or even of why we are all privy to the information because most of us never really bother to question something that just seemingly always has been.

It was a masterstroke of brilliance really. Someone along the line was a strategic artist of the highest order. Plant a subtle suggestion and reinforce it over the course of decades and you get exactly what you want - a population with such inherent distrust and lack of respect for each other that the concept of ever working with the "them" in the equation would be so foreign that any opportune moment would pass before it could be overcome. They managed to make the concept of unitedness alien to us all even as they remind us that we were once united with every public reading of the Treaty. It is yet another of those contradictions that I mentioned earlier. Yes, there was definitely a master strategic artist at work at some point in time. You will never convince me otherwise. It was all quite impressively accomplished - too impressively accomplished to not have been planned.

I wonder sometimes what happened to that person (or persons) who laid out those paths for the Capitol to follow. I wonder if he or she or they got to go live out a quiet life or lives. I wonder if cleverness led to demise when someone in power started to worry about where else such skills could be applied. I may not live in the Capitol, but I do not have to be present to understand what types of things go on when people have the longevity of power that politicians in the Capitol seem to enjoy.

I am digressing. Let's not get sent off track by the odd paths that my thoughts have traveled. I was explaining how well the Capitol has managed to seed distrust between the Districts. I was giving examples.

Don't get me wrong - just because I can see the bigger picture for what it is does not mean that I do not play into their maneuvering just as much as the average District resident. I have my own District prejudices. It is difficult not to have them. Abstract theory is all well and good, but I still have to live here. I still have to watch the Games just like everyone else. I still have to live with the Games just like everyone else.

I, to be perfectly blunt, do not give much credence to the generally whispered status of monsters that the other Districts like to use to label my District's children. It is funny how people like to throw that name onto whatever it is that they would not be willing to do themselves. I could turn it around on a District like Eleven, and they would not have the faintest understanding of what I meant. They only see the term Career through the lens of working with the Capitol. They think their lack of volunteering in Twelve is some sort of a sign of occupying a higher moral ground. They think the way that the children from Eight clearly have no idea how to defend themselves is some sort of a badge of aloof from it all honor.

If you will indulge me for a moment, I have a suggestion for you. Pay attention to the District tapes of the Reaping - not to the actual Reaping but to the panning over the gathered crowd before it begins. Focus on the twelves. The ones in the outlier Districts look pale with shadows under their eyes. They have not been sleeping. They have been having nightmares. Lots of them are shaking. They are scared. They are worried. They think that the name that is drawn out of the bowl is going to be theirs. They think that they are going to die. The twelve year olds in the Career Districts do not share those fearful expressions. The ghosts of nightmares are not peeking out from behind their eyes. There is a reason that that is so. It is not because those of us in the Career Districts are monsters who have forgotten how to feel. It is because we handle the Games differently here. The other Districts do not recognize that handling for what it is. They only despise us for it.

I submit for the record that their children still have to go. Their children still stand in their squares with their names written on slips of paper. Their children are still called up on a stage. Their children are still dressed up like dolls gone horribly wrong and paraded through the streets of the Capitol. It does not matter how aloof or morally superior they want to pretend that they are - their children still have to go. Each year they serve up two sacrifices on a platter just like the rest of us. Their aloof disdain, their disgust with us for "playing along," and their sense of somehow being better because they do not are ultimately meaningless. All of their pretenses end with their children boarding a train to go to the Capitol just like every other District.

Do you know what it is that all of their attitude gets them? It gets them dead children. It gets all of us dead children. Do you know what the difference is? Our dead children are not twelve years old. Our dead children actually had a chance to not come back as dead children. They cannot say the same. Who really deserves the label of monster in this scenario?

The true answer to that question is, of course, that the label belongs to the ones who are demanding the sacrifice of our children in the first place. At least, that is what I think on most days. There are times when it seems to me that the label also belongs on all of our ancestors - the ones who decided that it was acceptable to sign that blasted Treaty in the first place. They can both have it. There is plenty of guilt (and blood) to go around.

It is, however, a little difficult to be sympathetic to a group of people who allow twelve year old little girls and boys to board that train every year with no more than a few sniffles and vague gasping noises offered in a mockery of protest. Twelve year olds from the Career Districts do not get on that train - ever. We may send children to the Games just like everyone else, but we send ones that are on the nearly adult side of children. We send ones who know enough to have a chance at coming back. We send ones who are choosing to go.

The other Districts can have their illusions of moral uprightness. They can keep their contempt. They can throw out the word "Career" as if it is making them dirty to even say it. They can mutter about how we are lapdogs for the Capitol. They can turn up their noses and judge and play right into the Capitol's hands with their distrust and disdain and inability to see beyond the training and the volunteering that they cannot bring themselves to understand because they do not want to understand it.

I will reciprocate. I will hold to my unwillingness to understand standing idly by while the names of twelve year olds are drawn. I will hold to my distaste for leaving children unprepared as people pretend that leaving their young to willful ignorance is some sort of protest instead of a means of attempting to avoid facing the reality of the situation. I will continue to find the images of teary children being ripped from their families as their Districts allow the Capitol to dictate to them revolting.

I will keep our way of doing things here in the Career District where I am proud to claim residence. I will keep our training centers that offer our children the opportunity to learn. I will keep the skills that we grant them to use when the trains come back to claim two more (and make no mistake about it, the trains will come back to take two more whether our children are prepared or not). I will keep the calm twelve year olds gathered in our squares who are not shaking with terror because they already know they will not be going. I will keep the knowledge that all thinking people in our District hold to of our subtle slap to the Capitol and its Games with the fact that they do not sweep in and take our children from us. We stand firm every year and tell them which children they can and cannot have.

We play their Games, and that, I think, is what the other Districts find so distasteful. They want to pretend that protesting the fact that they are playing somehow negates the fact that they are playing. They still have to play. We all have to play. We just choose to play well. We choose to play so well that the ones running the Games do not even see that we are out playing them. We cloak our defiance and our objections within the confines of the Games, and the Game runners end up showering us with prizes for it. We openly flaunt their rules and guidelines, and they think that we are doing them a favor.

It is really quite funny if you have a rather morbid sense of humor. I happen to not be in possession of one of those, but that does not diminish the sense of District pride I feel on each occasion that the Capitol chooses a name from one of those glass balls and find their choice shoved back in their face. They never get to pick, and I do not think that they even realize that that is what it is that we have accomplished. They do not choose; we choose. They do not take; we send. It may be a subtle distinction (one that is certainly lost on the other Districts sitting in judgment and sneering down their noses), but it is a distinction. It is one that we wear as a badge of honor. It is one that we cling to as the demonstration of what it is we have chosen to be in the midst of the trap of the terms of the Treaty.

We accept the designation of Careers. We embrace it. We do not blush or turn down our eyes or any of those other things that the ones spitting out the word would expect from us in reaction if they did not believe we were devoid of exhibiting what they would consider appropriate reactions. We have no reason to be ashamed. We have no reason to cringe. We know what we have chosen, and we are comfortable with the ways that our choices play out as the years cycle from Reaping to Games to Victory Tour to a repetition of all three. I wonder if the others in Districts who choose differently ever sat down and thought the complexity of the situation through without their bias blinders on if they would be able to leave their time of reflection saying the same.

There is someone in one of them I am sure that thinks of these things just as I do. Someone sees the way the Capitol plays us and knows that there is no reason for the people in that District to know the names they are called by those from the Career Districts. He or she understands the bias and the deliberate division. We will never meet each other - things in Panem do not work that way. We will have our similar thoughts in our similar lives (despite the Capitol's best efforts to convince us that there is very little similar between us). We may casually mention those thoughts in dribs and drabs as we feel out who is or is not receptive. We will not say too much or share too deeply because that would just be dangerous, but the mentions we make to some will eventually be repeated to others.

The thoughts and ideas will continue to circulate even after we are gone. There will come a day when it will be the right time for thinking them. There will come a day when the Capitol overplays its hand or something else rallies people's attention and the knowledge that the Districts really are not as separate from each other as the Capitol would like us to be will be important to remember.

The question will be whether or not we will remember it in time.

If we do not, the moment will pass. Things will continue on much as they currently are. The thoughts will not disappear - ideas never do. They will still dwell in the back of minds and be whispered here and there. They will bide their time until we come back around to the place where they are ready to be heard again.

If we do remember in time, then that will be a different story. It will be a story different enough that I cannot even begin to speculate what it will look like as it plays out. Having knowledge is not a guarantee. Even the use of knowledge is not a guarantee. Things will look different, but that is as much as I can commit to declaring. Everything else depends on too many different things for me to attempt to try to pin down what separates one outcome from another.

It might turn out that things will be much worse. It might turn out that things will be much better. Things are unpredictable like that. Decisions matter. Thoughts matter. People and their individual biases and whether they can work around them matter. Everything blends together to lead things to an end that could have been different if any number of things along the way had gone differently in their turn.

I am rambling again. I apologize for that. My speculations matter little. I doubt I will ever see them either confirmed or denied. The important thing is that I have made my point. We (the Districts) do not see each other as people with whom we could work. We see each other as people that we cannot understand - that we do not want to understand. The Capitol intends it so, and they reap the benefits of it even when we know that is what they are doing.


	2. The Tributes from District Eight

AN: I have always thought that the other tributes deserved to have names.

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to _The Hunger Games_.

_The Tributes from District 8_

Audrey

It does not sink in at first. Everything goes blurry when the escort from the Capitol calls out her name. She knows she must have gotten up on the stage somehow because she was, after all, there. She does not know whether she made the trip on her own or someone brought her to the stairs. She vaguely recalls shaking hands with the boy standing beside her, but she does not remember whose name was called. She does not remember looking at him. It must not be someone she knows because that would have broken through the fog, wouldn't it have? She does say her goodbyes to her family. She knows she told them she loved them. She knows she hugged her little brother tightly and told him a whole list of reasons why he makes her smile.

That is the only part of the rest of the day that is clear in her mind. It was likely the only part of the day she was fully present during. She had to be. She could not miss that last moment with him. She hopes it was enough even while she knows that it really cannot be. This is something from which she cannot protect him. She cannot take him out of the coming days of wondering and waiting and seeing the blood and violence played out on screen. He hates blood (is petrified of it really). They have never really figured out why that is. He once sobbed uncontrollably for over an hour because of the blood on his thumb from a hangnail. He was convinced that he was dying. She had been the one who cleaned him up and calmed him down. He was eight when he figured out that the people in the Games on the nearly impossible to get away from screens were really dying. For three years now, she has sat beside him and blocked his view whenever the tributes' deaths involved blood. Would one of her parents remember to do that in her place now that she would no longer be there? She meant to ask them to remember, but the Peacekeepers had come back and taken her brother out of her arms (and with the loss of him the fog had returned to settle over her thinking).

Her thoughts flitted from point to point never settling in one place. She could not focus. She could not tell what was going on around her. The fog refused to lift, and she found herself lacking motivation to attempt to fight it. She did not really hear anything anyone said to her, but she thinks she might have said something in response. She may have eaten. She may have simply pushed something around on her plate. She does not know. She does not know anything except that nothing seems real. The first piece of information that breaks through and causes something to click in her brain is the girl from District 12 yelling out a name.

Everything comes into sharp focus. Their escort had made them settle onto couches in front of a television to watch the replays of the Reapings. He wanted them to "check out the competition." Something in the back of her mind must have been paying attention. The girl from 12 is taking the place of her younger sister, and Audrey knows why this event broke her out of her stupor. It is her worst nightmare playing out in front of her. This girl has done what she has always known that she could not. She would not be able to save her brother if he were ever called. They do not let girls replace the boys.

That has been her greatest fear from the time that she understood what "volunteering" meant. If he were ever drawn, she would not be able to protect him. She would not be able to do anything but stand aside and watch. She has never done anything but protect him, and she does not know what she is in a place where she cannot. She cannot protect him from the coming weeks. She feels a kinship with this girl from 12 who obviously knows how she feels. She will likely never speak to the girl, but it is a comfort somehow to know that she, in some bizarre way, is not really alone. She will have to trust her parents to keep their heads and look after him. She will try to make sure that her death is bloodless. That is the only thing left for her to do for him. And maybe, maybe her being chosen will be an assurance of his future safety. What are the odds of two children being chosen from the same family? Better for the second, she knows, if the first one does not win.

She does not know anything about the woods that make up her arena. She lives in 8. All she knows are textile mills and sewing machines - she is a long, long way away from either. It is cold, so she does the only thing that she really learned to be good at during their days of training. She lights a fire. She wants the light so that her brother can see her. She wants to reassure him that she was not part of the blood spilt at the Cornucopia. She hopes a camera is trained on her so she can tell him one more time that she loves him.

That it was the wrong decision for her to make occurs to her very quickly. She should have stayed in the dark. She should have found a way to freeze to death in the cold. That would have been bloodless.

When the careers find her, she begs. It is not because she is afraid of dying (even though she is). She has reconciled herself to dying in spite of her fear. She begs because she has seen what the boy from 2 has done during training. She has heard him talking. She knows her death will not be simple. She knows it will not be quick. She knows that there will be blood, and she wanted so much to protect him in this one last way. She hopes, that perhaps, one of them will decide to quiet her quickly if she makes herself loud and annoying enough. It does not work. Her only hope left is that her brother is at home (not at a public viewing with the Peacekeepers watching), and that her parents are paying attention to him and not to her.

When the boy from 12 comes back and whispers to her while holding her hand, she almost changes her mind. She thinks it might not be so bad if her brother is watching now, and she hopes he knows that she did not die alone.

Zip

Everyone knows that their name is in the ball. Everyone thinks that it will not be them. He is sure his face shows surprise. He remembers to walk, though, and takes his place on the stage. There is a tumbling sort of feeling in his head as if his mind cannot decide which thought it wants to think. It is not like he needs to listen to the reading of the Treaty. He knows what it says. He has heard it all his life. Now, listening to it would just be listening to confirmation of his death order. Most tributes do not come back. He vaguely wonders if his mother regrets insisting on only one child now. He knows his father wanted more. His mother always insisted that they could not afford it. He thinks, sometimes, that his parents forget just how thin the walls in their apartment are.

His mother must be heartbroken. She scrimped and saved and always made things work. He never had to take out tesserae. She was always so proud of that fact. It did not do them much good in the end. He is still here on this stage. He is still going to be offered up as entertainment or as punishment – who even knows anymore – in a kill or be killed environment. He wonders if he could do that. He wonders if he could kill. He wonders what could make him want to take someone else's life.

He turns his head slightly to study the victors in their chairs. He looks at Woof who seems oblivious to what is going on around him. That probably has nothing to do with being a victor – the man is completely ancient. His eyes flick to Cecelia. She is smiling softly at someone on the edge of the crowd. He cannot tell which person it might be from the angle from which he is viewing. It is probably her husband or one of her children. They always point out Cecelia in school when they want to talk about the wonders of being a victor in the Games. She will never have to work a day for the rest of her life. She has a lovely family. It must not be so bad – killing – if you can go through it and come back to be like Cecelia.

His mother would not have to scrimp any longer. She would not have to worry about money. He still does not know how he would go about killing. He does not know how. He only knows noisy weaving looms and how to fix them when they snag. That will not help him come home again. His eyes shift from Cecelia to the others – the ones who did not end up like Cecelia. There are always whispers about the way only Cecelia seems to have a family. There are always whispers about how soon her children will be reaped. They are only whispers, so maybe he should not listen, but whispers seem to be the only way that the truth is spoken in Panem.

His eyes shift to his fellow tribute as they are escorted away. The girl looks detached but not in a confident way. The Peacekeepers just kind of push her where she needs to go, and she does not seem to notice. He walks on his own. It may be petty, but his choices are limited now. He chooses to walk with his head held high. He has that left. He will hold on to it.

The room in the Justice Building designated for their good-byes is silent for their allotted time. The three of them sit with no words exchanged between them. His parent's look more shocked than he feels. He should feel cheated. He should feel as if he has missed out, but he does not. It seems right to him, somehow, that they remain silent because there is not really anything to be said.

He attempts to learn things that might be useful during training, but his heart is not really in it. What can he actually learn in two and a half days? He does okay with several skills, but he does not excel in anything. He has nothing impressive to show the Gamemakers. He is not sure whether he wants to have. Shouldn't he be feeling something other than the semi-apathy he has sunk into ever since his name was called? He needs to make up his mind. Is he going to try? Is he going to kill? Does he want to commit to doing what he will have to do if he wants to go home? He does not know. He does not want to decide, but the clock is ticking down. If he does not make his choices soon, the decisions will be made for him (deadlines work like that).

He is still in that in between place as he rises into the arena that morning. He still has not made up his mind. He does not see what hits him. All he knows is he still has not made up his mind when everything goes black.


	3. Mrs E (Part One)

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to _The Hunger Games_.

_Mrs. E. (Part One)_

Once upon a time (in a place that you may have heard tell of in a story or two or three), there lived a little girl whose world was as brightly tinted as the golden hued hair on her head. Her life revolved in simplicity around the two people who mattered the most to her – the mother and father who taught and played with and patted and praised her. The three of them were always together, and the three of them were very happy. The three of them lived in a clean, snug little apartment that smelled like mint and was settled over the top of a small, crowded shop that smelled of more than the little girl had as yet learned to identify.

This shop under her home was a place where other people came and went taking the packets and bottles and jars that decorated the shelves with them. The little girl did not pay much mind to the people when they came, and she did not pay much mind to what they took with them when they went (except to notice that each item had its own particular scent that did not always blend into the most pleasant of combinations). Her mother, her father, and their little home (with shop attached) were all that were important to her. She was content to be with them within the clearly defined boundaries of all that needed to matter. She was loved, and she loved them. What else do young children ask to make them happy? She could think of nothing else. It was peaceful in her world. It was quiet in her world. It was safe in her world. It was all she knew. As far as she knew, it was all there was for her to know.

That is not to say that the girl in question had some sort of enchanted, unnatural childhood. That was not the case at all. It was, rather, comprised of all the things of which a normal childhood should be. There were grumpy days. There was the introduction of the word "no." There were the usual childish disappointments in her life, but none of those things were important when balanced with the usual pleasantness of her days. She did not miss the things that her parents could not provide for her because she did not know that such things existed. She did not realize it when her family struggled. She did not hear the whispered conversations when her parents were worried over something that she was too young to understand. Those were things that hovered on the edges of her world and never penetrated into the sanctity of its confines. There was, in fact, only one thing in her life that caused her to experience any real form of dismay.

It happened rarely, very rarely, that one of the nightmares that often come to plague young children for no discernible reason would come to visit her. Shadowed figures would form out of the darkness and reach out to touch her with their creeping, searching fingers. She was not certain what it was that would happen to her if the shadows succeeded in their attempts to touch her, but she knew it would be something too horrendous to be put into words. She would cower within the confines of her bed with the covers pulled up high to block the view of her room. Her actions were taken in the hope that if the darkness that she could not understand could not see her face, then the unknown would fade away and leave her be. It was her best effort, but it was not enough to protect her. The things crouching in the darkness on those occasions were more persistent than that; they were not so easily dissuaded. There were whispers that she could hear and could not comprehend that swirled in the stillness. She recognized that she could not hold them off on her own. She would leave the haven that she had attempted to create furrowed under the warmth of the fabric, and she would run for the one place that she was certain she would be defended. She raced through the darkness to escape the whispers and the searching touches by climbing into the bed that belonged to her parents. It was not very often that the nightmares came, and their sway over her never lasted for long. What chance did shadows in the darkness have when pitted against the security of the care of those who loved her? She would snuggle into the waiting arms of one of her parents and let the shadows retreat as they, in turn, recognized their own defeat.

The girl grew older (as is nearly always the case with little girls), and it seemed to her as if the world grew with her. The boundaries that had tied her safely to her home stretched to admit new places and new people for her perusal. She discovered that there were streets for her to run down. She learned that there existed a soft, green place called a meadow in which she could play. She found that there were two nearly identical little girls (just her age) with golden hair like her own who could often be found in that meadow. They felt each other out and cemented an alliance. The three little girls explored their new limits together. They learned to play tricks on the grownups who could not tell the difference between her two new friends. The laughed in each other's bedrooms over their cleverness in employing said tricks. They plaited chains of meadow flowers (they were not weeds like their mothers insisted) into each other's hair. This new experience was exciting – this having friends and playmates beyond her parents was an adventure the likes of which she had never before contemplated. Her world had changed, but the changes were not bad. She still had her home. She still had her parents. She still had her protection from the nightmares that still came to chase her upon occasion. Her changes were additions, and they required no exchange for their inclusion in her life. She kept the old components of her world, and she added the newly found. Her world remained a happy place, and she remained joyful in it. Thus, the early years of her childhood passed away, and the nightmares were always kept at bay. Those things that were pleasant overcame the temporary intrusions of darkness. Her life continued, and it continued as well as it could in a place where whispered fears of her parents joined in with whispered fears of others out in her expanded world to create a vague sense of unease in the background of her life that the nightmares liked to play upon, but her waking, daylight self never spent too much time considering.

The settled pace of her life continued on with its touch points of her parents, her home, her shop, and her friends. Whispered fears stayed whispered fears, and happy days in the meadow remained happy days in the meadow. Everything remained thus for years upon years until the day when the shadows and whispers and darkness of her nightmares began to reach their creeping, grasping fingers out into the daylight where she had always considered herself to be safe. The borders between the darkness from which she had always run and hidden and the light in which she spent the rest of her time were first breached on a day when the sun was brightly shining over the gathered crowd in the square of District 12 when the District Escort pulled a slip of paper from the glass ball on the podium and called the name of the golden haired girl who was clutching at her hand.


	4. One Gamemaker in the Crowd

_One Gamemaker in the Crowd_

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to _The Hunger Games_.

It would be unseemly to walk down there and wipe that self-satisfied smirk off of her face with a backhanded slap across her features. Gamemakers do not have personal interactions with tributes. It simply is not the done thing - no matter what the provocation. We are above such things - even if the fact of the matter is that no one would ever know the difference. Besides, I do not think there are any stairs directly connecting our different levels. I would have to jump down, and that is not something I would ever do whether I am being provoked or not.

The frightened expressions of my colleagues far outnumber the considering looks that surround me, and I allow a small moment to indulge in a sigh at the incompetence of the majority of those who have reached this pinnacle of employment in our field. You can divide us into two groups based on our reactions to the arrow that came sailing in amongst us and speared its target on our banquet table.

There are Gamemakers who are here because they make good entertainment for the masses in the Capitol to cheer and get teary and riled over as if it were one of the inane novels that are forever being pushed in the shops as a fantastic escape from the every day mundane. They serve their purpose, and most of them serve it well. That does not make their shallow understanding of the broader implications of what they are doing any less of a chore for those of us around them to deal with day in and day out. They are the ones who squealed as if they were fattened pigs themselves. They jumped and mumbled and rushed out of the way even when it was clear that there were no more arrows coming.

That, in and of itself, was an interesting development. In the course of seventy four years, it has never occurred to anyone that there was any sort of a need for a barrier of some type to be placed between the Gamemakers sitting on high and the tributes with a variety of weapons at their disposal down below. I do some mental calculations and decide that if she had truly wanted to inflict harm, then (between her obvious skill that could not possibly have been obtained in the mere hours of training available to her since her arrival and the equally obvious state of panic that her actions would have created in her targets) she could quite easily have eliminated an entire third of the Gamemakers before anyone would have managed to take an effective counter action. Depending on circumstances (and whether she had any proficiency at all with any of the other weapons at her disposal), she might have dispensed with a solid half of them. It would have been a bloodbath, and it had never occurred to any of us (myself included) to think that it was a possibility.

I could tell you exactly which persons in the room understood what it was that the Games truly were by the contemplative expressions that took over their features in the aftermath of District Twelve's unprecedented display. They were the people in the room who understood exactly what type of power we wield in Panem. They understood that they could turn the tides of elections, create and squash civil unrest, and change the course of the country with exact manipulations of the emotions and perceptions of their largely captive (and otherwise addicted) audience. They were the ones who understand exactly why Snow always chooses one of the others to be promoted when it is time for a new Head Gamemaker to be appointed. The president of Panem wants our talents at his disposal, but he trusts no one with any sort of power that he does not believe he can carefully control.

In many ways, Snow is a fool. In many ways, he demonstrates a cold brilliance in the face of challenge. It is always interesting to speculate as to when the former will catch up with him and overcome the latter. This Games this year might push that time a little closer to the present. That is the problem with Snow's need to micromanage. Crane will not see the girl with her arrows as anything other than a very good show for the somewhat jaded palates of his viewers. He will not see what else she is capable of being.

The man is, after all, standing in a corner currently salivating over what kind of money he can make with a few carefully placed words to some toy manufacturers about what the "in" Hunger Games' item of choice will be this year. It never appears to occur to him why the girl had fired off that arrow. It will not cross his mind that there is anything deeper to think about. He will not be considering how that righteously angry look of defiance across her features will play out if and when it is broadcast to every downtrodden soul in all of the Districts of Panem.

If she is allowed to make the wrong sort of displays once she is in the arena, President Snow is going to be less than pleased. Crane will never see the end of his days as Head Gamemaker coming until it is far, far too late for him to correct his course (if that man is even capable of viewing the big picture well enough to even attempt a course correction - something of which I have serious doubt).

The other Gamemakers use their controls to manipulate the arena. I (and a select few) use the arena and its inhabitants to manipulate the land. They will only see ratings and public responses and the immediate outcomes of it all. I play a far larger Game - one that takes months and years for the results of each individual move to be seen in full. It requires patience and strategy and the recognition that every little thing matters because every little thing has the potential to be the thing that tips everything in one direction or another. There are times when Snow fails to comprehend all of those nuances. I doubt someone like Crane even realizes that they exist.

It all makes for a rather interesting combination. I have been doing this for a very long time, and I will admit that I am as hungry for my own personal amusements as any other resident of this place. I have a feeling that this is going to be a very interesting year (in more ways than any of the people standing around this room - myself included - know). I always trust my feelings on matters such as these because I never let myself feel anything I have not weighed out logically before.

I notice a momentary contemplative expression on a face that I did not expect to see displaying such a thing - the man actually fell over when the arrow flew after all. It is gone quickly enough to give rise to doubt that it was ever there in the first place, but I know what it was I saw. That is interesting. That is very interesting indeed. We have Games within the Games all residing within the biggest Game of all - I might actually find myself startled at some point before this is all said and done. I can hardly wait - it has been twenty four years since that has last happened. I would say that I am due, wouldn't you?


	5. Of District 13 and Refugees

_Of District 13 and Refugees_

Disclaimer: I do not own the rights to _The Hunger Games_.

Is she allowed to say that she is scared? She is not sure whether that would get her into trouble or not. She is unclear about a lot of things and whether or not they would get her into trouble or not. She does not quite know what to think about this strange District that came out of the oft repeated history lessons of why one did not disobey the Capitol to turn out to be not demolished after all.

She thought, at first, that it was just because it was so much so fast that she was having so much difficulty getting her bearings. There had, after all, been an awful lot to process what with her District being burned to ash and all that. She always said the words flippantly (even in her head) because saying them any other way was to invite a reason to sit herself down and cry (and she was very convinced that this was not the place for her to do that). She did not want to think about the fires or the smoke or the way that she had thought that they were all going to die. She did not want to think about the strange, hysterical laughter that had taken hold of her when she had latched on to the thought that she had prepared often enough to end up buried underneath the ground that she had been totally unprepared for her death to come falling out of the sky.

She was not dead. There was that. She had not suffocated or burned alive, and that was more than she could say for the majority of the people with whom she had shared a District for the entirety of her life. This new District was different. She had the distinct impression that she could live to be an old, old woman in the halls and chambers and stairways that were carved out of the earth and still be an outsider to the denizens of District 13.

She was not certain what it was. She could not quite put her finger on it. She knew that she should be thankful for the rescue that she had received. She was, in fact, thankful to be rescued from the chaos and confusion and the smell of burning things and the possibility of the Capitol sending hovercrafts to find their hiding places and the overwhelming sense of having no idea what it was that she should do. She was.

That did not mean that the whole of District 13 did not give her an unpleasant sort of chills. She thought that she might have felt that way if she ever found herself in a District not her own; she had, after all, never traveled to another one before. It might be that the different way of doing things would have rubbed her the wrong way no matter where it was that she had encountered it. She was not likely to ever be in a position to make a comparison (although there had been a time that she would have stated that finding herself in District 13 would have been an even less likely possibility).

She did not think that it was because they were underground. District 12 sort of revolved around being underground. She had spent plenty of her life shut away from the sun. There was the fundamental difference that when you were mining you still had going back out of the mines to be in the light again to look forward to, but it was equally true that the interior of 13 was a lot more well lit and a lot less rock about to fall on your head at any moment than the mines had ever been to counter that.

There were the schedules that took some getting used to, but she had followed a schedule of when to get to and when to leave at the mines and back at school and for viewings of the Games for as long as she could remember. District 13 took the scheduling a little further. There was not a moment of the day that did not have a defined purpose. Her not in the mines, not viewing required Capitol programming hours back in 12 had been her own. She usually spent them worrying about what she was going to eat or sinking exhausted into her bed, but they had still been her own. If she had felt up to making a trek to the Meadow on a Sunday afternoon to soak in the sunlight and observe a bit of prettiness in her otherwise fairly coal covered home, then there was no list printed on her arm to tell her that she had other places that she was supposed to be.

People were nice enough about the number of refugees that had crowded into their home (although it did not feel much like crowding when she stopped to compare the number of people that she actually saw with the amount of space that the underground District seemed to cover), but there was just something about the way the people of District 13 had of not reacting to things that made her stop and blink at them in surprise that always caught her off guard. It did not even make sense that she expected them to react - they had been living like this all their lives, but that did not change the way she felt about it.

The way they took in stride the fact that there was nothing in the whole place that anybody was really allowed to call their own was something that she could live out the rest of her days with and never quite find herself making peace. District 12 was hardly the best place to ever be, but there had, at least, been within it things that were hers because she had made or earned them - not because someone else had decided to grant her their use. It was as if the entire place was one giant circle of owing, and owing was not something for which she had ever much cared. The fact that it was some sort of nebulous "The District" that one presumed to owe did not help her feel any better about it. It reminded her at times of those speeches from the Capitol that they used to play that always talked about how the Districts had stepped out of line in the rebellion by challenging the ones they ought to have been grateful to for taking care of them.

Of course, she was not old enough (not by decades and decades) to know what it had been like in the days before the rebellion, so she should likely not try to draw comparisons about things that she did not understand. She was not dying of exposure somewhere in the woods that surrounded District 12, and she was not a pile of charred bone lying in what used to be the Seam. That, at the moment (and likely for a whole lot of moments to come), was what was important to remember.

Different places did things different ways had become a mantra that she repeated to herself more times in the course of the day than she bothered to count. She was safe enough. No one was trying to burn her alive in her bed. She had jobs to do that she could tell herself required more concentration than they actually did so she could stop using the time to think about the way things used to be and the people that she used to know and what the scent of burning flesh felt like in your nose.

She would get used to things or she would not, but she would live here just the same. She did not have much choice about that. She had never had much choice about where she did her living. It might be different, but it was not really anything so very different than what she had done before. She would keep telling herself that - the list on her arm told her she was supposed to be "reflecting" after all.


	6. Mrs E's Thoughts on Katniss

_Mrs. Everdeen's Thoughts on Katniss in Thirteen_

If there was one thing that she had never wanted for her daughter, it was that she would end up being like her mother. It was a sad state of affairs when you realized that the heartbreak you were feeling over your child's hurts was because they were your own. She had never wanted this for Katniss. She had been almost certain that her oldest had escaped inheriting her temperament. It was obvious now that she had not. She knew the expression on her child's face all too well. It was the same blank look about the eyes that she had witnessed in the mirror each day after her husband had died.

Depression was not supposed to be her strong, able daughter's lot in life. The soul crushing sense of loss that kept you trapped behind a fog that you could not seem to penetrate was something that Katniss was supposed to be immune to; she was supposed to be made of sterner, hardier stuff. She only wishes that were the case.

Katniss is her daughter. (The words feel strange even in her head because she has always thought of Katniss as belonging to her father.) Katniss is her daughter in ways that she had hoped she never would be. She wonders if anyone else even notices. On the surface, it is Prim who is her mother all over again with her gift for healing things, her light hair, and her blue eyes that everyone muttered about looking out of place back in their home in the Seam. There is so much more to it than the things that are seen on the surface.

It's the underneath that matters now, and it's Katniss who is like her underneath. She wonders, for a moment, how it is that she has missed that all these years, but she realizes that it was hidden after they lost their husband and father. Katniss couldn't afford to be destroyed then. As much as she had loved her father, she had loved her sister more. She had held together for Prim because Prim had needed her. Prim had been the center of Katniss's world, and she had lived her life accordingly. She had fought when fighting was hard. She had pushed on when it would have been easier to curl up and let the grief take over. She had, without a second thought, volunteered to go to her death because Prim mattered more than anything else.

She knew what it said about herself that her husband had ranked higher on her own personal scale than her children. It was not a comfortable piece of self-knowledge, but she had acknowledged and made as close to peace with it as she could come long before Prim's name had ever been drawn on that Reaping Day. She wondered, when the initial fog lifted, if Katniss would come to similar terms with the knowledge that her sister had been replaced (knowing Katniss as she now thought that she did, without her even realizing that it had happened).

Peeta Mellark was what mattered to her daughter now, and Peeta Mellark's absence (and probable demise) was what drove her normally stoic child into the twilight of existing instead of living in which she was engulfed. Prim recognized the signs even if she did not say the words. She could see it in her youngest's eyes when she looked between the two of them when she thought that neither would notice. Prim might have gotten her eye color and their shape from her, but the expressions of which they were capable were all her father. She knew how to read those eyes.

If anyone had asked her two years ago which of her children would crumble if they had lost their home, she (as she imagined most anyone acquainted with them all would have done) would have said it would be kind hearted, sensitive Prim. She could see now that they all would have been wrong. Prim loved the whole world, and that left her with something left to love no matter what losses piled up on her. She cried her tears, but she kept going. She was her father's child in that respect.

Katniss who let so few in and focused her affections so narrowly found herself at a loss when the object was no longer there to be the object. She should have seen it sooner - the ways they were alike. There was a reason that Ari Everdeen had no friends to count for all of her years living in the Seam. The Donner twins had been the companions of her childhood. Losing Maysilee had, ultimately, meant losing the both of them, and she had never seen the need to seek a replacement. She had acquaintances. She had her children. She had had a husband whom she had built a world around.

Katniss had Prim. She had had Madge Undersee to fill the social obligations of her student life. She had had Gale Hawthorne to help lighten the drudgery of the care of a family she had undertaken at far too young of an age. She had not wanted anyone else. She had not needed anyone else. Katniss would have done without Madge and Gale if the circumstances had changed one way or another just as she had done without the Donner twins (with a thought from time to time of how it had been different when they were there before she shrugged her shoulders and went on with the way things were without them).

She should have noticed the similar turn of their dispositions earlier. She's noticing it know. She wishes that she weren't. She wishes that it wasn't there to see. She wishes for a lot of things that she can't have even though she has long, long ago given up on wishing. Peeta Mellark was a bad idea from the start, but she doesn't have the heart to wish that her daughter had remained oblivious to the boy's inclinations. She's never had the heart to wish that she had remained oblivious to why that young Everdeen (as her mother had called him) was always lingering around after he had brought them things for the shop.

Katniss will mend as well as such things can be mended. She'll do it because she has a chance that not all of them are given. If she could have blown the mines completely to pieces in the days after she had lost her husband, the fires would still be burning. Katniss can fight back. She has a target; she has the means waiting at her disposal. There is anger to be found in the dark kind of grief that she and her daughter have clung to, and Katniss will be using hers. What remains to be seen is what will be left of her daughter after she does. She doesn't know. She's never found a way to burn out hers.


End file.
